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Async agents add a context switching load
Agents can remind a person where things stand, so returning to work no longer means re-learning the code base and architecture. That is a gain over the old days of booked focus time for coding.
The cost shows up elsewhere. With more async work in motion, a manager now has to block focus time to catch up on all the different async work that was started. Checking in and reviewing never end, and the context switching load is increasing for team members and users alike.
The team is looking at how to reduce that load.
Why does switching tasks cost so much?
Researcher Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine found in workplace studies that after an interruption, people took around 23 minutes to return to the original task. Sophie Leroy, then at the University of Washington, described attention residue in 2009: thoughts about an unfinished task linger while a person starts the next. The residue lowers performance on the new task. The effect grows when the earlier task is unfinished.
Why did programmers book long focus blocks?
Programming requires holding many details in mind at once, and an interruption can wipe them out. Paul Graham's 2009 essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" argued that makers need half-day blocks while managers divide time into hours. A single meeting in the middle of an afternoon can break that block in two. Many engineering teams respond by setting no-meeting days or hours.
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